“That they want to involve statisticians in ongoing work is interesting. What level of education in statistics does one need to have?”

Apparently, none: wasn’t it Mann who admitted “I am not a statistician”?

“Skill in statistics does not mean a better understanding of science or even uncertainty…”

Does this mean that lack of skill in statistics makes one a BETTER climate scientist?

“The idea of using statisticians without training and a publication record in the relevant science, or as an integral part of a larger team should not be given air.”

Several things here: 1) Very few “peer-reviewed” climate-based journals will accept papers written by statisticians, 2) Climate science is based in multiple fields and statistics applies to all of them, and 3) If their “larger team” HAD a statistician, we wouldn’t be having this argument (or have the papers we do).

Anyway, I revised my submission in light of interaction with Rahmstorf and I resubmitted. I put in links to lucia’s blog, mine and realclimate for supporting documentation.

He’s got to know that private individuals aren’t going to spend the thousands on peer reviewed articles, and we can certainly comment. Also, that Rahmstorf paper shouldn’t have been published in the first place. Why should people waste their money publishing one that decrees “We compared the data to the IPCC projections using a method similar to Rahmstorf, but accounting for uncertainty, and no sane person would draw any conclusions!”

Stefan is just going to have to get used to the fact that people will read his paper, comment and point out it’s dreadful. If he’s going to blog, he ought to learn to stop defending by telling people to spend thousands of dollars out of pocket to gain the right to criticise.

That paper is dreadful, and it shows nothing. The fact that it was published reflects backly on Science and the seven authors who can’t tell how dreadful their own paper is.

Interesting that the Garnaut Review has not published David Stockwell’s submission. Mine (very brief) neither. I hope that this is a temporary omission. It would be unprecedented, I think, to omit submissions from the public record.

[Response: If you really think you’d come to a different conclusion with a different analysis method, I suggest you submit it to a journal, like we did. I am unconvinced, though. -stefan]

Sweet. More later.

The recent “argument by complaining about spelling”…. well, let me tell you, that sort of things always makes me suspect the one arguing by spelling really can’t identify a good counter argument!

I have to finish a paper on optimal shapes of earthen roadside drainage structures right now.

That’s why I’d like to see some authoritative support for your and Lucia’s criticisms of the paper.

I would too. The time for comments is closed at Science. Garnaut didn’t put my submission up. Perhaps a good thing, but I might ask them why this week. Maybe E&E? Boy, those Garnaut submissions are a mixed bag! http://www.garnautreview.org.a.....ubmissions

I think the Rahmstorf paper proves that the IPCC needs someone who knows some statistics on board.

As to this:

That they want to involve statisticians in ongoing work is interesting. What level of education in statistics does one need to have?

All I can say is the fact that Rahmstorf has 7 authors, got published in Science, and that Stefan Rahmstorf criticizes Pielke for not considering the uncertainty in the data, while holding up Rahmstorf is proof positive these climatologists need some statisticians on board. (Or at least someone who is willing to open a book, discover that some techniques exist and apply them.)

At a minimum, if statistics isn’t your field, and you need to do determinations against data, you should:

* Use standard published methods many people know. (Unless you are doing something really novel, methods that appear in textbooks are preferred over methods documented in a single obscure papers.)

* Learn how to determine the uncertainty according to that method.

* Learn to check whether the assumptions for that method are violated.

* Learn the difference between β and α error.

* Learn how to spot obvious flim-flam when it’s going on. (That is, strawmen, cherry picking, idiosyncratic choices of analysis techniques fished out of lightly cited articles.)

I think the climate scientists could do this if they wished. But it doesn’t occur to them. They think “slide, eyeball, muse” is fine. It’s not a good way to figure out if the IPCC projections/predictions were ‘good’. (It’s even worse if we start discussing about the distinction between projections and predictions.)

On ‘acceleration’ of warming, the use of that word may be an extreme position, but the claim that ‘It’s worse than we thought’ seems to be a pretty constant refrain. In recent days, Lord Stern has been reported as saying:

“Emissions are growing much faster than we’d thought, the absorptive capacity of the planet is less than we’d thought, the risks of greenhouse gases are potentially bigger than more cautious estimates, and the speed of climate change seems to be faster,” [Stern] told Reuters at a conference in London … Stern said on Wednesday that increasing evidence of the threat from climate change had vindicated his report, published in October 2006. “People who said I was scaremongering were profoundly wrong …”

Well, global emissions aren’t growing MUCH faster than ‘we’ thought, if by ‘we’ he means the modellers who produced the emissions scenarios used in the TAR and again in AR4. At most, these emissions are at the upper end of the SRES range. And atmospheric concentrations of GHG aren’t increasing more rapidly than ‘we’ thought either. And, putting those two things together, it’s not apparent that ‘the absorptive capacity of the planet is less than we’d thought’ either. More generally, I’m not at all sure that the new evidence that’s become available since the Stern Report DOES vindicate the positions taken in that Report, and in any case I wish he’d be more specific about what new evidence he has in mind.

The Garnaut Interim Report is however explicit in citing Rahmstorf7 as the source of their concern that ‘it’s more urgent than we thought.’ That’s why I’d like to see some authoritative support for your and Lucia’s criticisms of the paper. Thanks Lucia for providing me with the opportunity of giving an extended explanation of my position.

It seems your focus is on the frailty of claims on the ‘acceleration’ of warming. I hadn’t previously been aware of this particular extreme position.

I hadn’t read the article, but I did and he seems to have the same view of Rahmstorf7 – sloppy and probably wrong. As to my statements about Rahmstorf7, they are distinct from what I think about the climate system. That is, when I say the most reasonable interpretation is fluctuating about a long term trend, that doesn’t mean that I think the system is fluctuating about a long term trend, and will continue to do so. I am trying to be precise about a particular analysis and the logic or illogic of the conclusions drawn from them, in order to come to some sort of resolution.

Part of my interest in the uncertainty of end points of the series too, is that it is a general question that might interest say a financial analyst smoothing time series, because my blog has a more general audience. Lucia’s attach is more specific to the paper. You can understand not anticipating a lot uncertainty at the end of trends, but the arbitrary nature of the problems Lucia points out should have been obvious.

It strikes me that these people are so convinced they are right and so there is no need for stats. I personally think they are ‘completely wrong’ about GHGs but have been keeping quiet about it until I had proof, at least to the point where I would not be shifted into the climate crank box. Skeptics shall have their day, indeed. I’ll be working on this next.

Anyway, more on this later. I have to finish a paper on optimal shapes of earthen roadside drainage structures right now.

In an invited contribution (‘ A Critique of Wood on Global Warming’, 26 July 2006) to the blog of Australian economist John Quiggin, Dr. Roger Jones of CSIRO, an IPCC Coordinating Lead Author, criticised the Wegman Committee for recommending that ‘evaluation by statisticians should be standard practice’ in climate change research, including in the ‘application-for-approval process’ (Report, p. 6):

‘That they want to involve statisticians in ongoing work is interesting. What level of education in statistics does one need to have? Skill in statistics does not mean a better understanding of science or even uncertainty… Ian Castles … attacked the IPCC SRES scenarios on statistical grounds, without showing that the underlying assumptions relating population and energy use were in fact incorrect. The idea of using statisticians without training and a publication record in the relevant science, or as an integral part of a larger team should not be given air.’

I’d be off-topic if I were to pursue Dr. Jones’s claims about my critique of the IPCC scenarios, but it IS relevant to the present discussion that Jones was one of several CSIRO IPCC Lead Authors who responded to the IPCC’s recent invitation to comment on the Panel’s future – and that, In that context, he offered the following criticism of AR4:

‘The difference between projections made in “model worlds” and how the real world was tracking were (sic) overlooked [by the IPCC], allowing misleading projections to be made for the early 21st century especially (e.g., 0.2 C per decade for the next few decades – WE ARE ALREADY ABOVE THIS RATE AND ACCELERATING)’ (IPCC-XXVIII/INF ‘Future of the IPCC – Compiled comments from Governments, Authors, Organizations and Bureau members’, p. 93, EMPHASIS added).

I don’t know of any hard evidence that supports the latter contention: I suspect that, like the Garnaut Climate Change Review, Jones has relied on, and perhaps misinterpreted, the findings of Rahmstorf et al (2007).

‘Since IPCC’s first report in 1990 assessed projections have suggested global average temperature increases between about 0.15 C and 0.3 C per decade for 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2 C per decade, STRENGTHENING CONFIDENCE IN NEAR-TERM PROJECTIONS’ (p. 12, EMPHASIS added).

So far as the 1990-2000 period is concerned, the IPCC ‘projection’ of the increase in temperature should NOT be compared with observed values because the latter reflect ACTUAL forcings, not projected levels. In particular, the TAR’s projections of emissions, hence concentrations, hence forcings, did not allow for the steep fall in emissions (= concentrations) of sulphate aerosols that is estimated to have occurred in the 1990s. The most comprehensive estimates are those by David Stern in ‘Chemosphere’, which the critics of ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ DVD were quick to cite for the 1950-75 period in explanation of the slight cooling that occurred during this period (see Steve McIntyre’s post ‘Risk Management Solutions Ltd. and the 37 Professors’ at Climate Audit, 3 May 2007).

But if the rise in sulphur emissions in the third quarter of the 20th century serves as an explanation of the cooling, it must be presumed that the (unanticipated) fall in these emissions in the 1990s would have contributed to the spurt in warming at the end of the 20th century. For further detail, see my Comment 1250 on the ‘Rahmstorf et al 2007: Where does their figure come from?’ thread on this blog, and the immediately succeeding Comments.

Moreover, the IPCC ‘projections’ for the 1990-2000 decade were standardised averages of a subset of the projections: see, for example, my post to the ‘You can’t make this stuff up’ thread at ‘Prometheus’, 20 March 2008 at 10.50 pm. Rahmstorf et al (2007) appear not to have understood the basis upon which the ‘projections’ published in the TAR were produced.

So for the first 10 years of Rahmstorf’s 16-year period, there’s no reason why the relatively rapid warming should have strengthened confidence in the IPCC projections for the early decades of the 21st century. The proper comparison with ‘recent climate observations’ is with what the IPCC projections would have shown if the decline in sulphur emissions had been anticipated, which they weren’t. It’s surprising that 200 governments overlooked this elementary point when they approved the text of the AR4 SPM.

There’s no reason why the post-2000 observations of GMST increase should strengthen confidence in near-term projections either, for reasons that emerge clearly from Lucia’s analysis. Your observation about the Rahmstorf7 assertion that the climate system is responding more quickly (than projected) is right as far as it goes, but it can be taken further: Lucia’s analysis indicates that ‘IPCC projections overpredict recent warming’ (title of the March 10 post). This means, I think, that in this respect the climate system is responding LESS quickly than projected (subject to the limitations of the analysis that Lucia has spelled out in her posts).

Have you seen the article ‘Sceptics will have their day’ by Mark Lawson of the ‘Australian Financial Review’, which was published by the Australian e-journal ‘On Line Opinion’ last Thursday? It appears that Lawson has also been corresponding with Stefan Rahmstorf about the article that appeared in Science last May. It’s to his (Rahmstorf’s) credit that he has responded to both of you, but I suspect that he’s trying to defend the indefensible.